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We’ve heard back from the people behind the Western release of Cross Fire – the online multiplayer game that bears a striking similarity to Counter-Strike. A similarity that appeared a little too striking when readers found videos of the game containing at least one map lifted directly from Counter-Strike.

Clever Communications, providing the PR for G4BOX (a Canadian company apparently nothing to do with G4TV), got back to us today with a statement to say that the map was included in the Asian version, but will not be present in September’s US/UK release. Statement below.

Clever Communications told us,

“We want back to the development team and the people at Neowiz who shipped the product in Asia. They confirmed that in addition to their custom maps they also included the map you refer to from CS. That map will not be in the North American version.”

It’s an interesting statement. Interesting in so much as it’s a confirmation that Neowiz are openly including copyright infringing content in their game. (In the interests of full disclosure, I’m currently wearing a t-shirt that reads, “Copyright Infringment Is Your Best Entertainment Value”). However, this has no connection with either G4BOX or Clever Comm, as neither had anything to do with the game when it was released in Asia.

All of Neowiz’s English language web pages are currently offline, which we’re sure they weren’t before – but we could be horribly wrong. Developer Smilegate’s website (only works in IE) is in Korean – if there are any Korean speakers out there who could offer to poke around and see if the map is still there, we’d be delighted. Currently that’s all a bit unclear.

It’s also not clear whether we just saved G4BOX a fortune in court by pointing this out to them.

Although publishers are potentially liable for copyright infringement, warranty and indemnification clauses from authours which usually state there are – for example – no known copyright infringements and that the authour will pay for any damages the publisher sustains.

I hasten to use the name Planetside on RPS, due to previous cases where I’ve derailed the comments thread by doing so, but it too had a case where a far eastern game called Welkin #### (Can’t remember the number) appeared to have ripped not just the graphics engine but a large number of sound assets from it as well, whats become of that game since then I am unsure.